by Daniel Kalla
Fiona stops in the middle of the trail and turns to him. “What if the media finds out about this victim?”
“They’re bound to, Fee. Eventually.”
“Then what?”
“I’m on it. We’ll work with Lisa’s team to manage the fallout. But we’ll also get our internal comms people to spin the message as needed.”
“Spin, Nathan? We’re talking about a girl’s life.”
“I know. And I feel awful for her.” He shakes his head. “But we’re also talking about saving other lives. Not to mention a billion-dollar investment that’s being threatened by something we wanted no part of in the first place.”
CHAPTER 34
“You had to go all gaga over the vaccine, didn’t you?” Angela says from her seat on the other side of the desk. She’s so poker-faced that it takes Lisa a moment to be certain she’s joking.
“If all you have is a hammer…” Lisa says, citing one of Angela’s favorite expressions. “Anyway, how can we abandon the campaign after one reaction? Even one as serious as Mia’s.”
“Agreed. Only a jackass would pull the plug now.”
“Even if that jackass has to justify a critical, potentially disfiguring reaction to the parents of an otherwise healthy kid.”
“It’s a clusterfuck. I’ll give you that.”
“No kidding.”
“Actually, it’s more of a FUBAR.”
“Which means?”
“Fucked up beyond all repair,” Angela says with a satisfied nod. “They’re all military terms. Clusterfuck, FUBAR, and even snafu, which stands for ‘situation normal, all fucked up.’ Those soldiers, they do like to cuss.”
“As opposed to you?”
“I never really fucking noticed,” Angela deadpans. “Regardless, Lisa, it’s lonely at the top.”
“I had no idea how tough your job was. I used to think you just sat in this big office and surfed the net.”
“Netflix isn’t going to watch itself, is it?” Angela shows a hint of a grin and then motions to the other side of the desk. “This is a lot for you to be handling this early in the role.”
“Or potentially mishandling.” Lisa sighs. “I never expected my decisions to have such huge repercussions.”
“I think you’re doing all right. Well, for a placeholder appointee, anyway.” The grin leaves Angela’s lips. “How are you feeling? Are you coping?”
“I think so. Thank you.” Lisa feels as if her eyes might mist over. For Angela, of all people, to worry over her welfare. Despite her friend’s baggy sweater, Lisa noticed the bulge of Angela’s lower abdomen when she first sat down. It can only mean that her belly is full of fluid, caused by the ovarian cancer. But Lisa resists the urge to question her health status.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about Alistair,” Lisa says.
“Moyes? What about him?”
“I have this nagging sense that you two have a lot more history than I’m aware of.”
“It’s true.” Angela’s eyes dart in either direction, and then she says in a hush, “Alistair and I were lovers back in the day. We had a child out of wedlock.”
It takes Lisa a moment to confirm her friend is joking again. “What is it? Really.”
“We worked at the CDC together for a while. In Spokane, of all places. We never saw eye to eye.” Angela shrugs. “He was already old when I met him, and he was only in his thirties back then. But behind that stodgy exterior and war crime of a beard, he’s actually a very officious man.”
Lisa laughs. “That’s all, huh?”
“Annoying as he is, Alistair is very smart, and his judgment is good. Too good, maybe. The rotavirus vaccine was a particular bone of contention between us back then. Still is, if our last meeting is anything to go by. He loves to rub it in that he was right.”
“What if Neissovax turns out to be another rotavirus fiasco?”
“There’s no comparison. Rotavirus was never going to save the lives that Neissovax will.”
“Not sure it will matter once word gets out about Mia and what’s happened to her.”
Angela frowns. “You’re going to announce it?”
“I haven’t decided,” Lisa says. “What do you think?”
“I’d wait. The anti-vaxxers are going to soil themselves when they get wind of it.”
“It’s going to spook people, no question. But it’s bound to get out sooner or later.”
“From our point of view, later is preferable.”
Tyra appears at the open door. “You two got a sec?”
Lisa recognizes the purposeful look on her colleague’s face. “What’s up, Ty?”
She steps inside and closes the door behind her. “We had three new meningitis cases reported this afternoon. One’s already dead.”
It never ends. Lisa sighs. “All from Bellevue?”
“Two.”
“And the third?”
“A fifteen-year-old boy who lives in Magnolia,” Tyra says of the upper-middle-class neighborhood in northwest Seattle. “Logan Hinds. He’s in rough shape in the ICU.”
Angela grimaces. “A third cluster?”
Tyra shrugs. “Not sure you can classify it as that.”
“Why not?”
“Because Logan attended Camp Green with the original victims.”
Tyra’s eyes convey the same level of alarm that Lisa feels. “I thought we tracked down all contacts connected to that camp,” she says.
“We did,” Tyra says.
“Including Logan?”
Tyra nods.
“So why wasn’t he started on prophylactic antibiotics?”
“He was. Logan had the full dose. Rifampin and cipro. It didn’t protect him.”
Lisa’s heart sinks as she digests the implications. “So not only do we have a new geographical cluster, we’ve now got antibiotic failure, too.”
“It never was going to be a hundred percent effective,” Angela says. “As long the vaccine doesn’t fail us…”
A new worry forms in Lisa’s head. “Logan wasn’t vaccinated already, was he?”
“No,” Tyra said. “He wasn’t.”
“Thank God,” Lisa mumbles. “Didn’t we prioritize the Camp Green contacts to the top of the vaccination list?”
“Course we did, but it’s like herding cats. We haven’t been able to get all of them to the vaccine clinics yet.”
“Ty…”
“We’ll get them there, Lisa. Or we’ll bring the vaccine to them. All of them. Promise.” Tyra turns for the door. “Meantime, I got to track down the new contacts Logan might’ve exposed in the Magnolia region.”
“Hey, can you fire me a list of those new victims and how best to reach the families?” Lisa calls after her, and Tyra waves her acknowledgment without turning back.
“I have to run, too.” Angela starts to rise, but she gets less than halfway up before her legs buckle and she falls back into the chair. Lisa hops up and hurries around the desk to help her. By the time she reaches the other side, Angela has managed to push herself up with both hands planted on the desk. “I’m good,” she says, leaning away from Lisa’s outstretched arm.
Lisa’s heart breaks watching Angela hobble out of the office with such obvious effort, but then her phone buzzes, and she looks down and sees the reminder on the screen for a marital counseling appointment in thirty minutes that had totally slipped her mind. It will never work, she thinks, struck by her own inadvertent double entendre. Taking a breath, she calls Dominic.
“Hey. I hate to do this to you—to us—but I don’t think I can make our session.”
There’s a pause. “You can’t?”
“We’ve got a new cluster of infections. And a bad vaccine reaction. I’m being pulled in every direction.”
“I’ll let Beverly know we’re canceling.”
The quiet in his voice tells her how upset he is. “I’m sorry, Dom. Even if I did go, I couldn’t give this the attention it deserves.” What she doesn’t say is that
she couldn’t handle the added stress from another postcounseling debrief on top of all she’s facing at work.
“I get it, Lees. It’s just that I thought we agreed to make us a top priority.”
“We did.”
“Ever since you got this new job, it seems like you only have one priority.”
Is it too much to ask for one iota of support or understanding? But Lisa bites her tongue. “It’s chaos here, Dom.”
“Are you sure you even want to give this—us—‘the attention it deserves’?”
Lisa doesn’t mean to hesitate, but she wasn’t prepared for the question.
“Got it,” he says, without giving her another moment.
“Don’t read too much into this, Dom. Please. I’m in the eye of an ever-growing shit storm right now. I can’t think about anything else.”
“I know the feeling,” he says. “We’ll talk later.”
“OK. Thanks, Dom. I really am sorry—” But she hears dead air before she can get the words out. “FUBAR,” she mutters to herself.
The phone buzzes again. She glances down to read the text from Nathan. “Got time to talk?” it reads.
Aside from notifying Nathan of Mia’s vaccine-related reaction, Lisa hasn’t had a chance to discuss the potential impact with him. “Call me?” she types.
“Need coffee. How about we meet at our usual spot?”
Lisa smiles to herself before answering his text. “Sure.”
She heads out of the office on foot down the hill toward the coffee shop. Halfway there, the gray skies begin to drizzle, and she regrets not grabbing an umbrella as the rain steadily intensifies. Her hair is soaked by the time she walks through the door to the café and spots Nathan sitting at the same orange booth where they first met. There’s a steaming cup of coffee on the other side of the table.
He motions to it as she sits across from him. “Pour over. Black. Right?”
“Nailed it.” She shows him a grateful smile as she wipes away the drops running down her forehead. “Can’t believe I forgot my umbrella. Lived here way too long to make that rookie mistake.”
“Give yourself a break. You’ve had a pretty eventful day.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” She tells him about the latest victims, including the antibiotic failure.
He shakes his head. “Beautiful as this city is, I’m glad my sons don’t live here.”
“Right now I kind of wish my niece didn’t, either.”
“And the girl with the rash? How is she?”
“Mia was stable an hour ago on the ventilator. But her skin’s in rough shape. It’ll be a long road to recovery.”
Nathan looks down at his own cup. “Nothing in the trials suggested this could happen.”
Lisa resists the urge to reach out and give his arm a reassuring squeeze. “Of course not.”
“You haven’t heard of any other concerning reactions?”
“Nothing substantial, no. I just checked the website before I came.”
“That’s a relief,” he says. “Does this change anything with respect to the vaccination campaign?”
“From my perspective, no,” she says. “In fact, it’s becoming more and more clear that we need to get the most vulnerable population vaccinated. Could be the only way to halt the spread.”
“And your whole team is on board?”
“More or less,” she says, thinking of Moyes. “Obviously, there will be even more scrutiny over any further side effects.”
“Understandable.
“On a separate note, Nathan…”
“Yes?”
“Now that we’ve lowered the age of kids eligible for the vaccine, there’s going to be even more demand for it.”
“We’re shipping out more product. Will be here in a few days. Fiona tells me we should be OK with our current supply until then.”
Lisa sips her coffee, realizing that Nathan hasn’t touched his cup since she sat down.
“It’s really coming down now, huh?” He motions to the window, where, beyond the streaks and drips pooling on the glass, the rain is falling in sheets. “Sorry to drag you out in such a deluge.”
“Beats marriage counseling,” she murmurs.
“Oh?”
“It’s no big deal.” Lisa clears her throat, wondering why she mentioned it. “My husband and I were supposed to have gone to an appointment this afternoon. I couldn’t fit it in today.”
“Been there, done that.” Nathan nods. “Kind of like undergoing an amputation. Except without all the anesthetic.”
“It does leave you pretty raw sometimes, huh?”
“Like road rash.”
“You didn’t find it helpful?” she asks, surprised she’s discussing any of this with a man she hardly knows.
“Helped me get divorced. Wait. That’s not really fair. We had a good counselor. I learned a lot about my marriage. And myself.”
“Such as?”
“Annie and I…”
Lisa leans forward. “Yes?”
“Guess we eventually figured out that just because you still love each other, that doesn’t always mean you’re meant to stay together.”
And what if you’ve fallen out of love? Lisa keeps the thought to herself.
“How about you?” His eyes penetrate. “Are you finding it useful?”
“I think so. Maybe. I don’t know.” She runs her hand through her still-damp hair. “Probably would’ve helped more if we’d started five years sooner…”
“You’ll know when you know, right?”
“Our counselor likes to tell us that it takes longer to undo the damage in a relationship than it does to cause it in the first place.” Feeling her face heating, she forces a laugh. “Then again, she bills by the hour.”
“Makes sense, though.”
“How did you know, Nathan?”
“To be honest, it wasn’t my decision. Annie moved out.”
“Ah.”
“Said she couldn’t compete anymore with my true love.”
“Oh.”
He grins. “She meant my job. In hindsight, she was right.”
“But if you still love her…”
“She’s got a new partner now.” He shrugs. “It’s fine. We’re all friends. He’s good to her and the boys. Sometimes, though…”
“What?”
“I worry I’m doing the same thing to Ethan and Marcus. Putting my career way ahead of them.”
“I’m the one who dragged you out here and away from your Quebec trip.”
“And I’m the one who came.”
“You mention your kids a lot. You sound like a very involved dad to me. When I was their age, I would’ve killed to have a father who treated me with that kind of concern.”
He tilts his head expectantly. “Care to elaborate?”
“No. Not going there.” She laughs, waving a hand in front of her. “We’ve dug up enough of my skeletons for one coffee.”
“Fair.” His phone dings three times, and he reaches inside his jacket to extract it. “Sorry. Just got to check.”
“Please.”
The color drains from his cheeks as he reads the texts. When he looks back up at her, his jaw is clenched and his eyes distressed. He slowly rotates the phone until she can see the headline of the online article. It reads: “Teen Fights for Life After Vaccination.”
CHAPTER 35
Jack sits in the middle of the hardwood floor and rocks rhythmically on the spot without uttering a sound. Max finds it painful to watch. He knows his son is this silent only when he’s most distraught. “Jack, it’s just a new class,” he said reassuringly. “You’ll still be in the same school.”
But Jack’s stare remains blank, and he continues to sway like a human seesaw.
Earlier in the afternoon, Jack punched a second classmate. The poor girl required two stitches to close the inside of her lip where her own tooth had cut her. Fearing expulsion, Max and Sarah were incredibly relieved when the principal informed t
hem that he was only reassigning their son to a different classroom with fewer students and more aides. What the principal didn’t say, but they both understood, was that this class was designated for the most aggressive children at the Institute. On hearing the news, Jack was inconsolable. Not only does he abhor change, but he’s also incredibly attached to his current teacher. She’s one of the few people who can reach him.
Max sits down beside his son. “It’s not so bad, Jack. You’ll still have all your old friends at school. And you’ll still get to see Ms. Appleby.”
Jack stares past him without acknowledging the comment.
Max gently lowers his arm over his son’s shoulders. At first Jack doesn’t respond, but then he begins to rock faster. Max jerks his arm away, recognizing the warning sign, shamefully aware that he’s afraid of his own son’s unpredictable response.
For a minute or two, Max just sits in silence beside his son. Then his phone buzzes, and he pulls it out of his pocket.
“Have you seen it yet?!?” the text from Cole reads. Below it, his friend has attached a hyperlink to the Seattle Times website.
The headline launches his pulse racing. His excitement only grows as he reads the specifics in the article about a fifteen-year-old girl who suffered a life-threatening reaction to the meningitis vaccine. Max responds viscerally to the accompanying photos. He wonders why the paper even bothered to add the anonymizing black bar across the girl’s eyes, since her face is barely recognizable through all the blistering and puffiness.
None of the details described surprise Max. A small part of him even feels guilty, especially for the satisfaction he takes in the graphic photos. He understands that the girl is suffering and that her parents must be beyond worry. But he also sees them as incredibly fortunate. The doctor quoted in the article predicted the girl would make a full recovery, which is more than most vaccine victims can expect.
The news is better than what Max could have hoped for. It’s exactly what the cause needs. Not another cautionary tale told from the fringes. Not another voice in an echo chamber. No. This is irrefutable, visual proof of the dangers of vaccines, coming from the kind of mainstream media that usually marginalizes anti-vaxxers.